Color-tunable ultralong organic room temperature phosphorescence from a multicomponent copolymer

Functional materials displaying tunable emission and long-lived luminescence have recently emerged as a powerful tool for applications in information encryption, organic electronics and bioelectronics. Herein, we present a design strategy to achieve color-tunable ultralong organic room temperature phosphorescence (UOP) in polymers through radical multi-component cross-linked copolymerization. Our experiments reveal that by changing the excitation wavelength from 254 to 370 nm, these polymers display multicolor luminescence spanning from blue to yellow with a long-lived lifetime of 1.2 s and a maximum phosphorescence quantum yield of 37.5% under ambient conditions. Moreover, we explore the application of these polymers in multilevel information encryption based on the color-tunable UOP property. This strategy paves the way for the development of multicolor bio-labels and smart luminescent materials with long-lived emission at room temperature.

Long Gu, Hongwei Wu, Huili Ma, Wenpeng Ye, Wenyong Jia, He Wang, Hongzhong Chen, Nan Zhang, Dongdong Wang, Cheng Qian, Zhongfu An, Wei Huang, Yanli Zhao